Simona's BL Research Labtag:simona.com,2011-01-24:/bl//12011-03-17T00:36:28ZYour favorite info & review source on Boys Love [a.k.a. yaoi]!! Love and peace!!Movable Type 4.23-enSimona's BL Research Lab: Sakae Kusamatag:simona.com,2011:/bl//1.132011-03-17T00:29:56Z2011-03-17T00:36:28ZCiao everybody!After the introduction with the first instalment of the BL for Dummies Guide, let's finally kick off the first 'proper' article of the Lab introducing my favorite Boys Love author and, following, I will talk about one of the...Simona
Ciao everybody!
After
the introduction with the first instalment of the BL for Dummies Guide,
let's finally kick off the first 'proper' article of the Lab
introducing my favorite Boys Love author and, following, I will talk
about one of the hip & hot, or up & coming, or veteran &
evergreen but in any case unique & special or representative &
interesting authors I had the pleasure to study during my Boys Love
research. Very passionate research! Yes!
But anyway, bando alle ciance, 'nuff of chitchat! Let's rock'n'roll!
SIMONA'S BL RESEARCH LAB Special, unique, interesting Boys Love authors.
SAKAE KUSAMA BL's Mondrian
Professional manga debut: 2003 Manga titles so far: 5 Dojinshi activity: yes Dojinshi circle name: soft_machine
Sakae Kusama has a very distinctive and unique drawing style that
reminds me of certain European comics of the seventies, especially
regarding the page layout; we got accustomed to very "free" layouts
since the shojo manga of the 70s, with oblique, even triangular panels,
and nowadays a neat layout full of nice (?) squares like the classic
comic books looks almost boring, so Sakae Kusama reintroduces the square
look with a twist: her layouts are like Mondrian's paintings: there are
no white gaps around the squares and rectangles (if there are, their
presence indicates a gap of time in the story) and the panels are
separated only by thick black lines. Also, the drawing style almost
gives the impression of a sketch, especially in the early days, making
her manga really stand out from the classic "bikei" [美形 beautiful men]
manga that we are accustomed to. Her uke don't have big puppy dog eyes
nor look like pretty girls, and the stories are pretty realistic, but
always permeated by a fantastic sense of wonder; it is like living in
the real world as if it were a different dimension that we do not know
and wonder at.
Her
strength is in the choice of characters, who are always quirky and a
bit tormented, and also the stories she creates are very fresh and
interesting; after reading a certain amount of boys love manga, one
starts individuating, and getting a bit bored with, the clichés, deus ex
machina, and narrative mechanisms of "classic" BL, but Sakae Kusama for
some reason manages to free herself of any genre chains and delivers
new emotions every time, even with the classic, used "childhood friend"
or "professor and student" clichés.
Irome, her
monographic published in 2008 by Shinshokan, is very unusually (for
Sakae) set in a high school and it is a collection of stories,
interwound in places, that depict the liaisons between some students, ex
students and some professors, with her usual quirky realism, and... of
course, the ever-present megane!!
As
you might know, megane [眼鏡 literally "glasses", indicates also a person
who wears them] are a big hit in Japan; we have the meganekko fetish
[眼鏡っ子 girl with glasses], the kichiku megane fetish [鬼畜眼鏡 evil guy with
glasses, generally an appreciated main dish in those BL manga with a
bit, or a lot, of SM. It is even the title of a videogame], the inteli
megane fetish [インテリ眼鏡 intellectual guy], etc etc. Sakae Kusama draws a
lot of different and interesting characters, of all ages, but in my
personal opinion, she is the High Priestess of the Megane Oyaji* Uke
Cult! (if any... :D)
* [親父 lit: "father", means "middle aged man" but in manga world it can be referred to someone who is as young as 30 or about].
Her trademark is in fact the older uke, generally spectacled and a bit clueless but good-natured. Yagisan Yubin [A letter from Mr Goat
reference to a children's song about a letter sent by Mr White Goat to
Mr Black Goat that gets eaten before being read, see manga page above]
started with Tokyo Mangasha (the publisher that revolutioned BL by
introducing hip & cool authors and new depth to the genre)
serialized in the bi-monthly anthology BGM (Boys Guys Men, which turned
into the current Anthology Cab, that unites the Catalog series with BGM)
then moved to Libre's new label Citron and got finally published in
2010 under the title Macchi Uri [The Match Seller (in
Japanese the title sounds similar to The Little Match Girl)] presents
another unusual setting: in last century pre-war Japan, a young and very
tsundere president of a company + a righteous high school student + a
wonderful kichiku megane secretary + a wretched bishonen get entangled
in a love (? erotic?) net because of a love letter that was never sent.
Tokyo Mangasha publishes also her two earliest works Saiki no Tebiki [Hazard Handbook], one of the very few Shota manga in her professional work, and Hatsukoi no Shirei
[First Love's Ghost, see second icon on top and first manga page],
which is my first Sakae's manga and still my favorite (sorry I just
cannot have enough of megane suit oyaji uke!! gyaaaah!!). Her other
works Nikushokuju no Table Manner [Carnivorous Animals' Table Manners, see first icon on top], serialized on Core Magazine's Drap and Yume Miru Seiza [Dreamy
Constellation] on Libre's legendary B-Boy's Comics are probably more
famous, especially the first because of the personality of the main
character, who is a real Mistress from Hell (I am sooo sorry for his
poor boyfriend...) which is quite a novelty in the BL world; while the
latter is much more romantic. Having said that, Sakae Kusama's works can
be pretty erotic and explicit at times, but they never really are
pornographic, at least in my opinion. Then of course, if you don't like
sex scenes I would not suggest you to read them (^o^) but sex is
definitely not the main dish here. In a way, Sakae Kusama goes beyond
the boundaries of BL, playing with the clichés without being outplayed
by them.
She started publishing nice and innocent tales on
Shogakukan Flower Comics since 2007, a "proper" shojo magazine, proving
that she is an all-round author (who happens to like megane suit oyaji
uke, but hey nobody's perfect! :D) and can thrill you even telling the
story of a cat and a goldfish. Brava Sakae, we want to see more of you!!
From BL Lab Update #1:
In 2009, aside from the Zero-sex Kurofune Zero by Libre which publishes
her not-yet yaoi manga in installments that will take a while be
compiled in a monographic volume (since Zero comes out twice a year) she
has been publishing on Shogakkan's Flowers shojo manga magazine and
finally the tankobon is out! Sayonara Caravan is a collection of
short stories, some connected, some not, that happen in a small town. We
have teenager love stories (non-yaoi), a missing goldfish and a little
girl, a mysterious megane watch-repairer and his even weirder talking
black cat and a little kid who comes to poke his nose around, plus a
14-pages yaoi-themed manga but totally innocent. Well I guess that
innocence is a general theme for this book, and even though it is not
really yaoi, I'd recommend it to whoever needs a bit of dreaming in
his/her everyday life. Like me!
I also hope that, thanks to Flowers, this author manages to be published abroad because she is a genius.
Latest Update:
2010
has been a great year for Sakae with 3 graphic novels published by 3
different publishers, and she's been drawing other episodes of Irome wich
are going to be collected in a tankobon in March 2011 and some more one
shots on Be-Boy Magazine, Chara and Flowers again. And the best thing
about all this is that she has not lost one bit of her magic touch.
Great Sakae.
Bibliography:
1. Saiki no Tebiki [災厄のてびき Hazard Handbook] Shobunkan 2003 (out of print) New Edition: Tokyo Mangasha 2006 2. Hatsukoi no Shirei [はつこいの死霊 First Love's Ghost] Tokyo Mangasha 2004 3. Nikushokuju no Table Manner [肉食獣のテーブルマナー Carnivorous Animals' Table Manners] Core Magazine, 2007 4. Yume Miru Seiza [夢見る星座 Dreamy Constellation] Libre, 2007 5. Irome [イロメ erotic/sexy eyes/look] Shinshokan 2008 6. Sayonara Caravan [さよならキャラバン] Shogakkan 2009 [shojo manga, not BL] 7. Chikatetsu no Inu [地下鉄の犬 The Dog in the Subway] Core Magazine, 2010 8. Macchi Uri [マッチ売り The Match Vendor] Libre, 2010 9. Mahiru no Koi [真昼の恋 Love in Broad Daylight/Midday Love/Mahiru's Love] Shinkosha 2010
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Simona's BL for Dummies Crash Coursetag:simona.com,2011:/bl//1.122011-03-17T00:26:33Z2011-03-17T00:36:51ZLet's start with an introduction to Boys Love, also known as Yaoi. Why? Well, so that you will know what I am talking about when Simona's BL Research Lab kicks off and every time I talk about one of the...Simona
Let's start with an introduction to Boys Love, also known as Yaoi.
Why?
Well, so that you will know what I am talking about when Simona's BL
Research Lab kicks off and every time I talk about one of the hip &
hot, or up & coming, or veteran & evergreen but in any case
unique & special or representative & interesting authors I had
the pleasure to study during my Boys Love research. Yes because it is a
research you know, it is not like I read these manga for fun...
(Simona's nose suddenly grows some 20 inches).
But anyway, I
realize that BL, even though it is really hugely popular here in Japan,
is still a pretty controversial phenomenon so I will not get into too
much detail and try to deliver a tasteful account of each authors'
characteristics and style.
But anyway - again - let's not linger any further... let's start with a glossary!
Boys Love
(ボーイズラブ) indicates those works (manga, anime, videogames, novels, drama
CDs, movies, dramas, etc), aimed at the female public, that depict male
homosexual relations. BL works can span from very innocent and pure
love stories with not more (or even less) than a kiss scene to next to
pornographic manga with not much of a storyline, with a lot of subgenres
in between. There are also SM BL works. Incidentally, BL stories are
not necessarily only about boys but can also talk about grown-ups.
Yaoi
(やおい) is an older term that indicates the same genre, short for "Yama
nashi, Ochi nashi, Imi nashi", "No climax, no punch-line, no meaning",
which referred especially to original stories (mainly of romantic or
sexual content) written or drawn in dojinshi (fanzines) using characters
of existing commercial manga, anime, videogames, etc. (also known as
paro-yaoi, from "parody") just for the fun of seeing one's favorite
heroes indulge in naughty behavior :D Apparently the fujoshi decided
that it was a bit too diminishing and they started calling it Boys Love,
a term that was probably coined by the magazines.
Dojinshi
(同人誌) is the Japanese word for "fanzine"; "dojin" literally means
"peer", someone who is the same as you, a comrade, and also indicates a
literary group, while "shi" means "magazine". There are also text-only
dojinshi: short novels, short essays, poems, often enriched by some
black and white illustration, or a mix of both manga and written text
pieces. You can find fan-fiction as well as original fiction.
Fujoshi
(腐女子) means literally "rotten girl/s", and refers to fans of yaoi.
Fujoshi can be very active and organize events, cosplay, draw or write
dojinshi themselves. There are many Kakure Fujoshi (隠れ腐女子), the "hidden"
rotten girls who cannot, or prefer not, to profess their passion in
public.
Kifujin (貴腐人) pun on the word "fine lady", which
has the same sound, it means "noble rotten lady" and indicates older
fujoshi, generally married, with children or not, who did not give up
their hobby.
Seme
(攻) "aggressor"; from the verb "semeru", "to attack", indicates the man
on top. "Tachi" = "the one who stands up" in "real" gay slang.
Uke (受) "target"; from the verb "ukeru", "to receive", indicates the passive guy. "Neko" = "cat" in "real" gay slang.
Bishonen (美少年) is the male equivalent of "Bishojo", "beautiful boy".
Shota
(ショタ) refers to the branch of BL that focuses on younger boys. The term
Shota comes from Shotaro, the protagonist of Testujin 28, who was
hailed by a journalist as a bishonen who looks great in shorts and thus
the term "Shotaro Complex" was born as the male counterpart of the
"Lolita Complex". A woman (or man) with the Shota complex is someone who
likes much younger boys.
Now you are ready to discover the world
of Kichiku Megane, Oyaji Uke, Wanko Seme, Hetare and all the other
funky, mysterious, fascinating clichés of the world of Boys Love! Stay
tuned!!
I guess you missed the Lab
since
Akibanana's refurbishment! At least I hope so, since I am republishing
it ALL here on simona.com!! [With all the due updates! So even if you
read it all, there is always going to be some new stuff in store for
you!].
It's going to take a while so please
be patient and bear with me. (*^o^*) When it's all up and running again
I'll also try to write some more new articles and bring it to a total
revival! Yeah. In the meantime let's do a bit of revision /(^v^)
I
totally welcome your comments but for some reason it seems that the
system requires registration to Movable Type [the software I am using
for the blog, I guess it would grant you access to other blogs written
on the same platform] OpenID, LiveJournal or Vox. Since registration to
Simona's BL Research Lab is free please do register through the Movable
Type system as I really value your comments!